Recently, Century Theater, which was headquartered in our county and thus operated most of our movie theaters, was acquired by Cinemark. The benefits from this acquisition became immediately obvious:
- They must have updated their pre-movie screening technology — they are now able to entertain us with regular advertising rather than semi-entertaining stills they had beforehand. As a result, arriving early might allow you to grab the best seat in town, but you now have to suffer through a barrage of ads. To us, it’s a total turn-off!
- They hit the $10 per ticket mark in some of their theaters. I’m sure they need extra revenues to pay for their new ad screening technology
- One theater charges a quarter more on Friday and Saturday nights, so it’s $10.25 rather than $10 per ticket during weekend prime-time. I inquired as to why, but nobody seems to know. My guess: They think they can. My hope: They monitor their attendance on these nights and reverse this decision
- If you take a family of four to the movies, it will cost you close to $50, including sodas and popcorn. Even if you just go out on a date night, it’s $20 without the drinks and food. For that money you can get a monthly 3-movies-at-a-time subscription from Netflix
No wonder that these days you don’t find us (and apparently others as well) in the best seats in town that often: The product offered simply does not match the price Cinemark asks for. Especially after the acquisition.
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